Efficacy of herbal intracanal medicaments in endodontic disinfection

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Persistent root canal infections caused by Enterococcus faecalis remain a major challenge in endodontic therapy, necessitating effective and biocompatible intracanal medicaments. Therefore, it is of interest to evaluate the antimicrobial efficacy of neem extract, propolis extract, curcumin extract and calcium hydroxide in 100 patients randomly allocated into 4 groups of 25 participants each. All medicaments significantly reduced intracanal bacterial counts after 7 days, with calcium hydroxide showing 85.8% reduction, followed by neem extract (85.2%), propolis extract (81.8%) and curcumin extract (78.0%), while no clinically significant difference was observed between neem and calcium hydroxide. Neem extract showed antimicrobial efficacy comparable to calcium hydroxide, whereas propolis and curcumin also exhibited substantial antibacterial activity against Enterococcus faecalis. Thus, data support herbal intracanal medicaments, particularly neem extract, as promising biocompatible alternatives or adjuncts for enhancing root canal disinfection and improving endodontic treatment outcomes.